A Story about Acceptance
by SkippingSteppingStones
Summary: Upon waking up in a Rebel medbay after Endor, Anakin gets his first chance to properly speak to his children, and dares to imagine a life with them again.
1. A Story about Acceptance

Trigger Warnings: Hospital location

Headcanons: Autistic Force-sensitives, trans Skywalker twins

AUs: Vader (Anakin) survives ROTJ

It was a strange experience to wake again as Anakin Skywalker. Strange to feel Vader's aches from long-neglected injuries, and struggle for breath with the help of a respirator as he finally had a reason to live again. He had so easily tied all of that to his sins, and the worthlessness of his life, and to feel it again… It changed his perspective, somewhat.

Slowly, he turned his head, half wincing at the sensation of it. He was aware of his injuries. He had not been unaware while Vader, only associated his pain so closely with his actions that he had not imagined feeling them himself.

There was a hand in his, still, but soft and moveable, not a body in the grasp of rigor mortis. He opened his eyes, found his view partially obscured by a pillow. He shifted slightly, managing uncomfortably to lift his head, and lower it again on the puff of stuffing, gazing in silent, grateful awe at the figure next to him.

Luke. He no longer wore the austere black uniform that he had worn when Vader had met him on Endor, it had been traded for a light blue hospital gown, the neck of which was barely visible beneath a heavy blanket that had been laid over him. His prosthetic hand was curled loosely around Anakin's, his eyes closed and face slack in angelic peace. He was asleep.

There were slight marks on his body, scratches and bruises from their duel, and on his exposed arm, thin lightning scars, running down to the connection point of his prosthetic, but Anakin felt certain that the Alliance was putting everything they had into his care.

They had bothered to get him, their enemy, out of his torturous life-support monstrosity and into a more comfortable, if less mobile, array. A clear mask covered his nose and mouth, and might have been distracting, had his gaze not been so fully drawn to his son.

It was a wonder. A wonder that they were both alive, that they were together at last, that despite his father's lack of faith, Luke had been the one to reunite them, with others who would care for them, rather than simply allow them to suffer in tandem. A wonder that the Alliance had allowed Luke to lie next to him, that Luke had even _wanted_ to.

But there he was. Half-familiar, and silent, and comfortable.

Slowly, Anakin reached out, shifting awkwardly onto his side, brushing his fingertips across his son's face slowly, feeling the contours of his child's cheek. At his touch, Luke smiled slightly, a sort of patient amusement in the gesture as he slowly cracked his eyes open and peeked up at his father.

Anakin hesitated for a moment, unsure if he was ready to speak yet. He had not spoken for twenty years, since he had last held his wife, smiled at Obi-Wan…

"Hello," he sighed, the word quiet enough for only Luke to hear, only his son here to witness his return.

Luke's eyes sparkled, his smile grew. "Hello, Father."

Anakin could only smile back, feeling his heart rise as Vader's never had, settling in his throat, and precluding any additional speech. He reached down for Luke's shoulder, drawing him weakly closer, and the boy rolled towards him, ducking his head comfortably.

Anakin struggled for a second with his breath mask but managed to free himself of it for long enough to press his face into his boy's hair, breathing in unsteadily, unable to get enough oxygen, but not caring in the slightest. His son smelled of electricity and bacta, but he was alive. He was in Anakin's arm, close enough to see without vision enhancements, and smell with his limited breath.

He pressed a kiss into his son's hair, before withdrawing, carefully replacing his mask over his mouth.

"I'm so proud," he sighed, capturing Luke's other hand as well, and squeezing them tightly, holding them to his chest. "My son. My little one."

 _Mine_ , he thought again, awed at the very idea of it. He had nothing, he had never truly had anything, it had not been allowed. But Luke had come to him, had claimed Darth Vader as a father, as someone he wanted in the absence of Anakin, the absence of his mother. He had claimed himself as Anakin's child, had made a stand on that ground, which Anakin would not have thought strong enough to support the weight of such a claim. His bonds to his family had been so easily cut, before.

The boy exhaled, squirming his left hand free, and drawing it over Anakin. The part of him that had become accustomed to being trapped in Vader recoiled, anxious and annoyed at the potential pain the action could bring, but he silenced it, pulling his son in close, remembering how right it felt to hold someone, as he finally had the opportunity to do it again. His son gasped in a breath, and squeezed him tightly, pressing his face to Anakin's shoulder, shaking his head slowly.

"I thought-," he began, "I thought you were gone. I thought you'd changed your mind."

"About wanting you?" Anakin asked, incredulous. Holding his son again, it was all he could have wanted, all he had wanted twenty years ago, and all he had yearned for since. Vader had supressed it, the better to follow orders, but now that he had his son again, Vader was gone with his helplessness, banished by the light of his son, the determination to bring that light to the galaxy at large.

The boy only shrugged, slowly releasing Anakin, and slipping back to his side of their paired beds, pulling his blanket properly over himself again before looking up at Anakin. "I don't know. You were gone a long time."

 _A long time,_ Anakin thought. As if he had only taken longer at the grocer's than Luke had expected, and the child had become anxious waiting for him to return.

"I'm home, now," he answered softly, making himself comfortable on his side, unwilling to turn back to the ceiling. "You don't have to be afraid anymore."

Luke gave a small laugh, taking his father's right hand, and drawing it to his chest. "I was so afraid," he admitted softly.

Anakin smiled at his son, wanted to laugh at the pure adoration he felt, how at odds it was with everything he had been forced to become. Instead, he reached one fingertip up from Luke's enclosing hand, and tapped his chin lightly. "No more," he said, and as Luke met his gaze again, he tried to give the boy the same smirk he would've given Ahsoka, years ago.

"No more," he agreed quietly. "But you don't get to leave the medcenter for a _while_."

Anakin laughed. He didn't care that it hurt, he didn't care that it sounded strange and gravelly, it felt _good_ , on a level that physical pain couldn't compare to. "That seems like a reasonable demand," he said. "Have you seen your sister since the battle?"

"She's alright," Luke assured. "She came and visited after I got out of the bacta… Probably not going to swing by again to say hello, though."

Anakin sighed comfortably, finally accepting that laying on his side wasn't a good long-term plan and rolling onto his back. "I would not expect her to. Was she injured?"

"Minor blaster wound," Luke said, and Anakin smiled as the boy scooted up to his side, nestling in the strange contours of his father's battered physique, amidst scar tissue and grotesquely overgrown muscle.

"She's tough," he agreed, managing to work his arm around Luke. He remembered too clearly the pain he had inflicted on her when she had briefly been in his custody on the Death Star, but remembered also her resilience, the way she had boldly defied him, despite his reputation and actions.

Luke nodded, and Anakin looked down at him as he slowly tipped his head against his father's chest, his eyes drifting closed again.

"Rest," he agreed softly, stroking Luke's shoulder.

The Jedi gave a soft murmur of ascent, and Anakin watched as he dozed off slowly. Reaching out in the Force, he surrounded his son's presence with his own, rocking him lovingly in it, testing out the waters of the living Force once more.

He had missed it. Despite what he had struggled to tell himself, the Dark Side was not the same loving embrace that he had always felt from his natural powers. As a child, and even as he had become a Jedi, the Force had been a source of solace, familiar and all-encompassing and steady. He had dabbled in imagining it as a traditional parent, had even used to talk to his mother about his "father", but it had been beyond that. The Force was no more his father than it was a father to anyone else, it was the great equalizer, though not all could feel it. It was an uncaring but constant reassurance, a powerful comfort or guidance, keeping the galaxy locked in its eternal dance, and it was right. Being its agent was right, and allowing himself to be guided by it was right, and as much as the Jedi had told him otherwise, it had been right to guide him to Padmé, and right to see their children born despite great adversity.

The Dark Side had been different. Where the living Force was a current, the Dark Side was its eddies, was rip currents and jagged rocks in the flow, to which a lost soul could cling, and attempt to force the water to obey its will, but which would never be as comforting, as all consuming, as uniting. It was the violence and defiance, the determination to own and control in opposition to the needs and comfort of others, and it was _exhausting_.

He had lived that life. He had told himself that that violence was freedom, because he was no longer driven by forces outside his control.

But there was a _reason_ that rivers sought the sea, and a reason that people flocked to the Force's calm and gentle motion. It was right. It was natural. It was gravity, and it was love, and it was very human need. It was everything that made a man want to fight, save for the concept of fighting itself.

There had been a time he'd thought he liked fighting. A time when it had seemed like his calling to crash on the boulders and overwhelm the eddies and bring everything back to the flow, to equalize what even the Force's great, inexorable self could not. It had been an immense load, and it was one he had passed on to Luke, who had thrown himself against the rocks not to destroy them, but to free the presences upon them, to take his father and bring him back into the flow to drift along with him.

Perhaps it was better that way. Not to destroy the temptation to do wrong, or the inevitable flow of the Force past those rocks, the presences that scraped against them, but instead to simply offer a way back home. A way back to love, to protection, to quiet, gentle order. It was prescriptive, but it was not absolute. There was the enormity of flowing along with others, the streambed a guideline with plenty of space to explore, and in that exploration, there was another kind of freedom. A comfortable kind of freedom. A freedom he _wanted_ to share with his son, in a way that he had not wanted to share the burden of destroying the stones in their path.

Distantly, he heard the door of the hospital open, and he cautiously turned his head as Leia spoke.

"Luke?"

Luke shifted against him, made a tiny sound of distress at being addressed.

"Nearly asleep, Princess," he reported, gently soothing Luke back into the flow, back into the sleep the Force was begging him to succumb to.

"You're awake." She didn't sound glad, exactly, but there was a sort of relief to her voice nonetheless.

"Yes," he agreed, squinting uselessly across the room at her for a moment before gesturing her closer. "Luke told me you were shot."

"It's nothing," she dismissed, but to Anakin's surprise, she approached the beds her family lay on. "I've been treated."

"Show me," he asked. He could feel her now, to, and that was an unbelievable sensation to have not one, but two brilliant presences brushing against his.

She looked at him doubtfully for a long moment, before reaching to her shoulder, and unbinding her injury, carefully seating herself just out of arms' reach.

"Luke loves you," Leia said sternly.

"Yes," Anakin sighed, caressing his son's shoulder again as he inspected his daughter's injury. "I know that it is more than I deserve."

She sighed, her handful of bandages falling to her lap, and her shoulders slumping. She looked very different from Luke, very much a stranger to Anakin's blunt and simple worldview, the one he shared with his son. But she was his child, and his heart cried out for her even as she sat apart from them, and he held out his arm.

"Mother kept a diary," Leia sighed softly, looking up at him from under her lashes, seeming afraid to open her heart to him to even the degree of telling him such a basic fact.

"Yes," Anakin admitted. He remembered seeing her writing in it, had used to tease her occasionally that she still had a secret diary, and had sometimes doodled on the margins as she wrote.

"I know about…" Leia hesitated. "I know about your mother. And… and…" She looked absolutely lost for words. "About your master."

"Oh," Anakin sighed, his heart sinking into his stomach. He'd known his son would have some concept of what their family had been subjected to, being that he had been raised by his stepbrother, but the princess, he'd thought, might have retained innocence of that fact.

"I've been thinking about it," she declared, "And I understand."

"You don't have to understand," Anakin said gently, reaching out for her, intensely glad that his reaching fingers were only metal, the leather gloves with which Vader had harmed her stripped from them. "I do not want you to."

She looked at his sharp fingertips, her hands twisting in her lap.

He began to lower his hand. "You do not have to forgive me. You need not concern yourself with my childhood, for it is long past. My actions are my own."

Finally, Leia stood up, stepping closer to his head, before perching herself at his side. "She was vague," she admitted softly. "She never used your name."

Anakin shrugged, folding his arm over his stomach so that it wouldn't fall against her and startle her. "We were married in secret. I would not expect her to."

"But she wrote about you."

Anakin nodded, watching his daughter's face for every sign of distress, of which myriad ran across her features.

"She loved you," Leia said, twisting the bandages so hard that Anakin heard a faint tearing of fabric before Leia reached up and wiped her sleeve across her face. "Father said that Vader killed her."

"Oh," Anakin said softly, and he dared to move his arm back towards her, careful to keep his fingertips away from her until she was aware of his approach and accepted his hand as he lowered it to her knee. "Yes, I… yes, that would be accurate."

The princess nodded, wiping her tears again. "And you killed him. And my adoptive mother."

"I did not take the actions I should have to prevent their deaths," Anakin admitted.

"So you're all I have," she concluded. "I want to love you, too. I want to feel like Luke does."

Anakin looked down at his son, peacefully asleep in his other arm. The boy's comfort was nothing short of a miracle, the fact that he had gone to sleep next to him not once, but _twice_.

"It would not be unreasonable to call him naïve," he said.

She laughed, the sound somewhat choked by her tears. "No, it wouldn't be. Luke's really stupid about who he trusts." She sniffled, "And I suppose I want to be a little stupid too."

Anakin smiled, opening himself to her fully, accepting her presence into his heart as he squeezed her knee, wishing he could hug her without dislodging her brother. "Then come be stupid with us."

A/N Please review! The story technically has two reviews, but they're 'just' lovely lovely people letting me know it didn't upload right on the first try! :'D


	2. Growing Together

Recovery was not fast.

It never had been, it never felt quick, even when it was rushed, and he was back on the battlefield within the week. And certainly not as he sat uselessly in the Alliance's hospital for weeks on end.

But Luke would accept nothing less. His son sat with him for long hours, shared his room while he himself had recovered from the Emperor's attack, and he still smiled sadly, and kissed his father's forehead before leaving to take care of Rebel business each day.

Light streamed in the window, and Luke kept him supplied with various small robotics projects to keep him busy, but it was still mind-numbingly boring. He'd been reading, too, glorified storybooks that Luke liked, as thick as exhaustive war reports, but not as important. They were fine. He had one resting on his stomach now, even as he watched the trees outside, and tried to calculate the time.

It had been Luke who had suggested they not keep a clock in his room, since it only made it easier for him to try to count the hours. In keeping with his son's suggestion, he had intentionally not calculated the hour based on the shadows, but they were still short, and he knew it would be a long time before the boy came back.

His fingertips traced the familiar lines of the datapad, the synthskin skipping over its topography. He was still getting used to everything his son had provided him with, the better prosthetics, the integrated life support, the time…

It was all so enormously kind, and so outside of what he deserved. He thought Luke must have known that, but he was still too sweet and gentle to mention it, if he did.

The Alliance, too, was being unreasonably kind.

Padmé's friends made excuses about the way he had been raised, how Palpatine had manipulated him. He heard, again and again, that given his past, he could not be held responsible for his actions, and it was beginning to make him truly angry. He _should_ be held responsible, he wanted to yell, he was a monster, and it had not been Palpatine at his shoulder, forcing him to kill half the people he laid eyes on.

But they believed Luke. He exhaled, trying to let the anger out with the breath, trying to imagine that his freer breathing represented a newfound ability to release his feelings, as he'd always been meant to.

They believed Luke, and if Luke had taken the angle that he hadn't wanted to do the things he had done…

It wasn't entirely inaccurate.

He reached up to run a hand through his hair in his frustration, and found it absent. He was slipping into old mannerisms. Things he had done when he had first been Anakin Skywalker.

He chuckled to himself.

When he had had hair.

The hand fell back to his lap, and he looked at it in silence. It was marked with traits he didn't _remember_ having, but that had been added for the sake of realism. Realism to all but the owner of the hand, he supposed. An unblemished hand would have looked odd, they'd reasoned, and they'd peppered it with imaginary imperfections, veins and scars and birthmarks. The aesthetic appearance did not matter to him. What mattered was that he could feel Luke's hands, and touch him without concern about arcing, or catching delicate human flesh in sharp mechanics.

Luke seemed to enjoy it. He seemed to like climbing up onto Vader's bed, tucking himself under an arm, and reading or working, telling his father about his day, or dozing off in Anakin's warmth. He insisted on helping his father with salves, rubbing the healing creams into Anakin's shoulders, his scalp, his face.

He insisted it was because the first time Anakin had tried to do it himself, he'd given himself a black eye. _(On top of everything else,_ Luke had teased.)

He'd had more luck with treating his son than himself. After a few days of insisting his father was in too bad a state to even try to help, Luke had suffered himself to be treated by his father, rather than the droids. Anakin had spent a pleasant afternoon with his son lying over his lap in a half-sulk, while he carefully applied medicine to Luke's healing burns. Luke had given up on his sulk after an hour or so, and had moved to be able to look up at his father, despite Anakin's complaints, and chatted happily for the rest of the day.

He was a good child. An incredible child.

He hadn't seen nearly as much of his daughter, but he was unconcerned about that. Leia was more willful than her brother, and even though she had accepted his affection once, their history was more cemented, and he could feel that it took her hours to recuperate after her visits. She came when she was able to do so, when she felt confident that she could bear it.

The door clicked, and he looked up sharply, suddenly realizing that it had been his daughter's presence that drew his attention to her.

He pushed himself up, leaning forwards to see her as soon as possible, and when she stepped inside, and saw him waiting, she smiled.

"Hello, Father."

"Hello, Leia."

She pulled off her boots, and left them on the tray by the door, before approaching him, and giving him a quick hug, like her brother would have done.

"What brings you to me, today?" he asked lightly, taking her hand as she seated herself on his bed.

"Nothing in particular."

He could sense that it wasn't the full answer, that something must have occurred to merit a visit, but he did not insist. She would tell him in her own time, if she wanted him to know, and if she did not, then it was not for him to demand that she do so.

"Have any major systems joined you?" he asked.

Talk of the ongoing struggle was easier than trying to relate to her, or apologize for his crimes. The future, Luke had assured him, was something they shared, something on which they could agree.

"A few," she nodded, and as she bent her head, Vader saw a hint of dark circles under her eyes, hidden by makeup.

"Have you been sleeping?" he asked, delicately stepping over a line, daring to inquire about her health.

She yawned, and some foundation came off on her sleeve when she raised it to cover her mouth. "Some."

When she lowered her arm, Anakin couldn't hold back a laugh. "Acne?"

She turned scarlet, and quickly raised her hand again to hide what had been revealed by the brush across her face. "I don't -,"

"It's stress," he said, sitting up again, and carefully touching her face, investigating the angry pimples, cautiously touching her skin to get a good look. "You need to be getting more sleep."

Now that there was physical evidence of her stress, it was easy for him to feel her exhaustion, the many things that weighed on her mind. She was still young, like Luke, and unlike Luke, he could tell that she had not been addressing the effect that the war was having on her.

Force knew his damaged skin had done its very best to break out in the early days of the Empire.

"As if I have time," she muttered, pushing her sleeve across her face again, and revealing another swath of patchy skin.

"And yet you've found time to come to see me," he said dryly, reaching for a cloth, and the cup of water at his bedside, and passing them to her. "Give it a chance to air out."

She gave him a half-hearted stink eye, and wet the cloth, before dragging it roughly across her face, removing some of the makeup, and further revealing the state of her acne.

"Force, child," he said, taking the cloth from her, and continuing to dab at her face, while she sat still and long-suffering.

"Luke's not doing much better," she muttered defensively.

"Luke has been coming down to go to bed at a regular time, and if he cannot sleep, it is not for lack of trying."

The water was not fully effective to remove the layers of makeup, and he set it aside, opening his mouth to command her to go and find some proper makeup remover, just as she dove at his chest, wrapping her arms around his back, and clinging tightly.

"Woah," he murmured to her, gently stroking her back as she clung. At her touch, he could feel the exhaustion in her bones, that she was too thin, the fabric of even her tailored dress hanging a little loose. "Shh, princess…"

"I don't want to be envious of Luke," she croaked, and he felt her take the first breath of tears, and shifted to be able to more comfortably hold her, using the Force to move aside the book he had been reading. "It's not his stupid fault that he's so trusting."

"And this does not represent trust?" he asked.

"I'm _trying_ ," she said, "To feel like he must."

"Ah," he agreed.

He had held her while she cried once before, but then it had been in cruelty. Now, he cradled her, tried to hold her as he would a newborn, trying out its lungs for the first time. She was smaller than Luke, and as she lay against him, he could physically _feel_ that, but whenever she stood, he felt that she was taller than himself, nearly to the degree that she could crush him under her heel.

"Is there anything I could do to make it easier?" he offered, pulling his blanket over her from the foot of the bed, leaving his feet cold, but his daughter safely swaddled.

He felt her tentative Force presence reach out to his. It was dull, untrained, patchy with her preconceptions of the Force, and what it could and couldn't be, and he accepted it like a diamond in the rough. It was beautiful, like her brother's clearer presence. It was unbreakable and natural, everything perfect about his daughter, even if some perfection was misplaced, and darkened the effect…

It must have been why he had not sensed her sooner, why she had remained hidden from him.

She must have known so little of the burden of her family.

Still, he accepted the gem, cradling it against himself as he held her body. Lovingly, his presence gently brushed away what was not the Force, allowing it back to her being, what there was of Leia that was not her powers.

"We could train you, if you wanted," he offered. It wasn't exactly what _he_ wanted; he wanted her to remain free of their burden, so she could follow in her mother's footsteps, but it was selfish to demand she follow a dead woman, if she wanted to join her living family.

"Maybe one day," she said. "Right now, I don't have time…"

She sounded so deeply, deeply sad and tired.

"I wanted you to help me with some… administrative stuff," she mumbled, "But now I think I just want to be held."

"Show me," he asked, removing one arm from her shoulders, allowing her to sit.

She barely moved, only rifled in a deep pocket, and removed a datadrive.

"I know Luke gave you a 'pad."

Anakin smiled, slowly shifting, putting the bed fully upright, and adjusting Leia so she could still snuggle against him, even as he set the datapad on her back. "That he did."

Leia groaned flatly as she slipped to the mattress, and he shook his head, pressing his pillow under her head, and feeling her let out a long, low groan in response.

"Feeling pathetic, are we?" he asked cautiously, unsure if she would dislike the implication.

"Extremely."

He chuckled, beginning to read the paperwork she'd given him, his free hand rubbing slow circles on her shoulder, and felt her breathing slow as she relaxed into his comforts.

As the shadows stretched over the pair of them, he worked through several files, putting them in front of her to skim and sign, before settling into reading reports aloud to her. Eventually, a medic came, and ordered him to drink some opalescent medication if he intended to keep speaking, and he did as he was told, glad that the man had not commented about the general lying across his stomach, half asleep.

"'S enough," Leia mumbled finally, and he looked down at her. Her eyes had finally drooped closed altogether, and he felt a little prickle of pride that she'd been able to stay conscious through even as many dry reports as she had. "M' gonna go t' bed."

She made a valiant attempt at pushing herself upright, but her hands slipped, and she was deposited back onto her father's lap.

"Perhaps you should stay," he suggested, curling some hairs that had come loose of her braids around his fingertips. "Comm your brother, and ask if you could take his cot, for tonight."

She slowly opened her eyes again, looking at the other bed.

"'S a long way away," she complained.

He laughed, pulling her legs out of the way, and using the Force to clip the spare cot to the side of his, as Luke had done at first, before deciding to spare each of them the other's restlessness.

"Is that better?"

"'M not moving."

"I'm not asking you to," he assured, flicking his blanket back off her to another moan of protest, before soothing her by covering her with her own blanket.

"'E's gonna stay, too," she warned, forcing her eyes open enough to meet her father's.

"Luke?" he asked. "You are not the only warriors, Princess. I have shared accommodations with more than my own children, in the past."

He set the datapad aside on a bedside table, careful not to shunt off the plant Luke had brought him.

"Kay," she whispered, and he smiled, lowering the bars on the side of each bed, making the middle a feasible place to rest, and carefully manoeuvring his tired daughter to rest parallel to himself, ensuring that both beds were at the same height.

"You know you are as welcome to visit as your brother," he said, working to arrange her comfortably next to him, only to quickly have his shoulder reclaimed as a pillow, and find himself wrapping his arm around the girl he'd thought would never forgive him.

"I know," she whispered, and he felt the rough diamond of her presence press against his again, saw in its clarity the fear she still felt of him.

"My brave little girl," he murmured, pressing his lips to her forehead. "Get your sleep, now."

She nodded sleepily, and he closed his eyes, resting his chin in her hair, and caressing her presence slowly, lulling her into sleep. He thought briefly of how surprised Luke would be to see his sister participating comfortably in physical contact with him, but dismissed the thought. For now, he was not acting for Luke's benefit. His son could make what he wished of the sight, right now, Leia was the one whose comfort he was prioritizing.

Hours later, his son entered, smiled briefly at his sister, and came around for a kiss goodnight before crawling into bed as well.

Anakin lay still, watching over his children as Luke snuggled up to Leia, resting his head against her spine, looping an arm over her. She grunted, and shifted, and he brushed his presence against her mind, barely grazing her presence, soothing her until she fell still again in her brother's arm. He watched as Luke yawned, and observed in silent awe as Luke seemed to throw their bond wide, accepting his sister's tiredness into himself, and falling asleep almost immediately at its intensity.

Their bond was still glowing brightly, pulsing with their combined heartbeats, and Anakin finally closed his eyes, tucking his head down to Leia's. Anxiously, he reached out to them, to the supernova where their presences combined, and found that it was easy to swirl closer, to be drawn into their beauty and light, to feel his soul lifted by their gentleness.

For the first time since Padmé's death, he could feel his family as a singular unit, complete and happy, and when he woke to find that Leia had already left, and Luke was starting to pull on his boots, he felt strangely reassured that they would both return. That this bond, finally, would last.


End file.
